Simplicity is the essence of beauty

Saturday, 25 December 2010 0 Comments

We are about to say hello to 2011 and today I'm chilling at home, enjoying a cuppa hot steaming coffee, writing this blog while listening to the "Codename: Kids Next Door" my little star is watching on tele. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the number my team and I churn this year. They have worked hard and the result shows. The thing with sales and marketing is, it's a never ending climb. You have a target to reach and when you touched the top, you found yourself at the foot of the hill ready to start climbing again. We let loose in December and hit some bowling pins last Friday. The team won big time, leaving the technical department biting our dusts so to speak. But we leave it at that and set our gear for the new year that's coming in 6 days.

2011 is indeed a brand new year but FingerTec will certainly be the same, providing our customers with convenience and finding ways to make things easy for everybody. Some people love complexity, me on the other hand is a fan of simplicity. I think simplicity rocks. I'd like to quote Edward de Bono who said that simplicity is easy to learn and to use. People are usually frightened by simplicity because it threatens the complexity of which it is their job to explain. I couldn't agree more. My high school math teacher told us to use the simplest calculation in math, if you could spoon a food straight to your mouth, why do you want to twist your arm to the back of your head to spoon the food into your mouth. Get what I mean? By the way, grab "Teach Yourself To Think", a pretty good self-development book, i'd say.

By being simple as well, we are reaching a larger audience rather than the select few who have grade A brains. Being simple does not mean we neglect attention to details. Being simple means to explain things in the best possible manner to reach the largest audience possible.

Therefore, it has become our collective efforts to make things easy for our clients from all aspects of the business. Our job is not to test IQs instead whatever resources we provide we must ENRICH and ASSIST our clients the world over to the best of our ability.

Next year also marks the beginning of our effort to apply simplicity in our operation and saving the world in the process. We have gone back and forth in this issue and it's time that we put our foot down and stress on the importance of simplicity and conservation. I'm excited to what's in store for us in 2011 and I have my high hopes that FingerTec will thrive as a brand that cares.

by Norana Johar, COO, FingerTec HQ

Microwikinomics - Building on the Sharing Spirit

Wednesday, 15 December 2010 baik cari buku dari jadi tiga suku , business trends , company strategies , corporate culture 0 Comments

The Internet Guru, Don Tapscott has published a new book Macrowikinomics in 2010; it is not really a sequel to his previous book, Wikinomics that was published four years ago, it is a continuous observation for an expansion trend of the mass collaboration.

Don Tapscott

The term Mass Collaboration, popularized by Tapcott in his book Wikinomics is defined in Wikipedia (one of the most successful projects of mass collaboration, where the Wiki-nomics get its name) as a form of collective actions that occur when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature. Such projects typically take place on the internet using social software and computer-supported collaboration tools such as wiki technologies, which provide a potentially infinite hypertextual substrate within which the collaboration may be situated.

And, in the four years of penning the idea, the author observes that the wikinomics has gone beyond a business or technology trend to become a more encompassing societal shift. He says, wikinomics, defined as the art and science of mass collaboration in business, becomes macrowikinomics; the application of wikinomics and its core principles to society and all of its institutions. Just as millions have contributed to Wikipedia – and thousands still make ongoing contributions to large-scale collaborations like Linux and the human genome project, he urges, why not open-source government, education, science, the production of energy, and even health care? I believe these are not idle fantasies, but real opportunities that the new world of macrowikinomics makes possible.

Mass collaboration

But, just as the macroeconomics reduces its size to economics, and further down to microeconomics, I would like to scale down Tapscott’s macrowikinomics idea to microwikinomics, where mass collaboration does not only apply to those “think big” projects, but to be adopted in a lot smaller communities.

Just like most of the countries, their economies are not driven by a handful of conglomerates; but by the vast number of SMEs (small and medium enterprises), whom are commonly facing the scarce-of-resources problem, the concept of mass collaboration should be strongly promoted in this community.

I actually promote the same concept here within the FingerTec context. Buying and selling of FingerTec products is merely a business activity, to reach the state of mass collaboration, we anticipate resellers to contribute contents to enrich our resource pool. 

Over the years, we have built the resource pool of the microsites, mostly on our own, only a handful of our resellers contribute marketing stories, technical tips, translates TCMS V2 software or FingerTec hardware into their local languages, and etc. And in FingerTec Distributor Guidebook, I strongly encourage distributor to tap on our resources to edit their own version of newsletter to enlarge the clout in their local market; this is also a spirit that is derived from the microwikinomics.

I’m not partial to business agreements that bind each other. At FingerTec, we don’t initiate distribution agreement, because the commitment is not all defined by a simple sales figure. If some distributors or resellers continuously contribute to enrich our resource pool, they are like family members to us, rather than sheer business partners. Even if their sales figures are still far from satisfactory, I believe it is just a matter of time before we could observe improvements; and as a family member, we have the patience.

Tapscott lists these five important elements: collaboration, openness, sharing, integrity and interdependence to ensure a successful macrowikinomics. But when I think through, it applies to FingerTec microwikinomics too.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Reversing Business Concept

Sunday, 12 December 2010 business trends , company strategies , corporate culture , don't just access and accept knowledge but assess it 0 Comments

When we ranked the Top 10 Events of FingerTec in 2010 in the recent newsletter, most of them are tangibly measurable. But to me, the silent revolution that successfully took place in the company, which I couldn’t phrase it in any official milestone document should be more worthy to report.

I would like to start my explanation with this idiom, If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. It taught us if things do not change the way you want them to, you must adjust to the way they are. This is something about reverse thinking that leads to a reverse operation that yields a positive result.

What I want to convey here is that, when you think differently, act against all odds, the pay-off might be much higher than the conventional way.

The conventional and common practices that most businesses have include having sales people running around chasing customers, whereas technical guys would passively wait for customers’ calls.

If I were to ask, “Why don't we do it the other way around?” I'm sure to get this rebuke, “You mean the technical guys would go out chasing customers and the sales people could sit back and relax? Are you out of your mind? Now you really want the mountain to come to Mohammed.”

Why not? I'd insist adamantly, “Most people loathe spam mails, why should I act one like a Chinese company? If we have agreed on permission marketing, we'd need to get a ‘yes’ from them first.” And we often heard this complaint, “To conclude sales, they'd come anytime even at midnight; but come to after-sales services, they’re nowhere to be seen.”

Could I reverse the common business practice? This would make the technical department plays a more active role, and the sales department be a little laidback and less aggressive when it comes to pursuing customers. “Less aggressive? Without a sales quota, of course your sales department is too relaxed.” One of my business friends strongly opposing me.

To transform supposedly passive technical guys to be more proactive was not an easy task. 

The silent-revolution took me quite some years. Now, our technical department has been trained to promptly respond to all technical inquiries; has to ensure the offered solutions really solve problems; has to categorize type of technical issues for further analysis; has to gather customers’ requirements for further developments; has to work closely with R&D in fixing software bugs; has to compile technical tips for monthly newsletter; has to provide assistance in producing user and technical video clips; has to maintain two technical microsites, and help in another six; has to repair hardwares and, all in all, has to upgrade the service quality from time to time to a higher customer care level, rather than to stay merely at the problem-solving stage.

When I slowly reversed the business strategies and operations in 2005, it naturally occurred to me that this should be the right way for any ethical business practice, not the familiar one that has long been distorted by the shortsighted businessmen.

By reversing the priority, it seems a lot easier for us to build a satisfied and devoted customer base. And instead of trying hard to look for new customers, we often attracted them to come to us. The sales figure grew by 575% in the past six years (95.8% per annum in average) proved that my strategy was working fine and it matches well with the Blue Ocean Strategy that promotes “demand is created rather than fought over”.

The cornerstone of Blue Ocean Strategy is “value innovation”. A blue ocean is created when a company achieves value innovation that creates value simultaneously for both customer and the company.

Yes, the mountain finally came to us.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Standard vs Passion – Who Wins?

Friday, 26 November 2010 being like steve jobs without even knowing it , business trends , company strategies , corporate culture 1 Comments

Dabbawallahs - Lunch box delivery service

A lot of management gurus like to refer the Bombay Dabbawallahs operations as an outstanding example of excellence in logistics. The 120-year old business operation is often quoted as compliance to the 30-year old six-sigma business management strategy implementation standard in the India context. I couldn’t help but to laugh out loud when I heard the statement.

I didn’t laugh at the homegrown lunch box delivery service model, which was developed and perfected by a group of individuals who have very little or no formal education in the area of logistics; I laughed at the management gurus. What I have witnessed so far is too much of theories and standard management procedures that have jammed up the thinking process, especially for managers who supposedly need to think out of the box to improve their daily operations.

When a crude system like Dabbawallahs can meet the so-called six-sigma standard, it doesn’t mean that the management gurus have to pack and go home, it sparks another interesting topic that worth to ponder.

A lot of big corporations are willing to pour millions of dollar for experts to guide them through, yet they’re still struggling to comply with the ISO 9000 or six-sigma standard. The question is, why can an illiterate system in Bombay easily achieve the standard and yet they’re not bothered to claim the pride, or care to be audited by any International Standard Organization?

Many MBA graduates like to boast all sorts of jargons and buzzwords in their conversations, ROI, SWOT, SMART, sometimes even FART and etc to show-off their management knowledge, but what I see is a lot of mediocrity, ordinary managers who proud to follow the plain rules and running the daily errands, and for the bosses, please don’t hold your breathe for any breakthrough from them soon.

Even though they are stuffed with knowledge, they are like zombies without PASSION, the key element that leads to any success story. Yes, passion is what most of the career managers lack of in today’s corporations. It is clear to me that ones get jobs done with knowledge, but ones deliver distinct results with knowledge and passion.

Excellent result is driven by passion; it is not driven by six sigma or ISO 9000 standard. And sometimes you even have to bend some standards to achieve success.

It’s just like a famous quote of Dr Ian Malcolm in the movie Jurassic Park, "If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained .…….. life finds a way." If you’re longed for improvement, of course you will find whatever way to improve it, be it six-sigma or zero-sigma.

The Bombay Dabbawallahs are hiring 5000 people, and dispatch 300,000 lunch boxes to and fro on a daily basis. With a huge 7.5 million transactions in a month the system averagely only reported 3 errors per month. Of course they deploy a fantastic system of their own, but the system is definitely driven and perfected by passion, and not by any international standard.

I like to bend some business standards myself, and set my own standards. I don’t hold any company meetings all year long, I don’t need marketing manager to produce me a business plan that should send a shock to some MBA students. And our official FingerTec website is surely not fit to any corporate standard.

An article, “Being Steve’s Boss” in Bloomberg Businessweek the October 25-31 issue interests me. Somehow it assures that my being not standard shouldn't be a barrier to me achieving success.

“An anecdotal story: A friend of mine was at meetings at Apple and Microsoft on the same day. And this was in the last year, so this was recently. He went into the Apple meeting (he’s vendor for Apple) and as soon as the designers walked in the room, everyone stopped talking because the designers are the most respected people in the organization. Everyone knows the designers speak for Steve because they have direct reporting to him. It is only Apple where design reports directly to the CEO.

Later in the day he was at Microsoft. When he went into the Microsoft meeting, everyone was talking and then the meeting starts and no designers ever walk into the room. All the technical people are sitting there trying to add their ideas of what ought to be in the design. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Everyone around him knows he beats to a different drummer. He sets standards that are entirely different than any other CEO would set.”

Aha, I’m not the only CEO that requires the designers to report directly to me, Steve Jobs too. :-)

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

You Think It’s Easy Buying A TV?

Tuesday, 16 November 2010 0 Comments

It might be a bit embarrassing but this is my confession. I’m a tv addict. I use a lot of my waking hours watching television instead of doing something productive. But that’s not the embarrassing bit. I just changed my 29’ basic mundane tv to a Plasma HD just last Sunday. That fact is thwarting for a self-proclaimed tv addict. Personally, I’m a bit slow when technology is concerned. Like a snail, I’d like to know what’s hitting the rabbit upfront. Television technology has transformed tremendously since the black and white in a box that could be transformed into a vintage aquarium era. The decision of the tv companies to hire crème de la crème for their research and development team has finally paid off with the introduction of sleeker and slimmer televisions with picture quality so good, you thought you were in a Gold Class cinema at Pavillion (a posh shopping center in a middle of Kuala Lumpur) minus the sweet caramel popcorn. And now I need to change my cable to Beyond and my DVD player to Bluray to experience the awesomeness of modern television.

It’s not easy buying tv these days. You can’t walk in and say, I want to buy a color tv please. The sales person would stare you in the eyes and interrogate you like nobody’s business before recommending you to a biased-choice, the brand which provides him the better commission. Familiarize yourself with the terms before you even attempt to step into the shop. What’s HD? What’s plasma? What’s HDMI? What’s analog? What’s LED, LCD, Flat TV? Do you need extra cabling? Can you do your own installation? How to do the settings? Et cetera…et cetera. Samsung even goes a step further and introduce 3D tv, which I think is a bit premature at this stage considering that contents are still scarce. And now also, you cannot settle with only 3C! They have introduced 4C in the newly advertisement by Sharp. At last they figured out how to add the yellow. Pffft..

The size of the tv is also another matter to discuss about. A 29’ inch would invite smirks in the faces of relatives who come visit. The owner of a 55’ would purposely invite neighbors over for an afternoon tea to watch soap even though she hates making tea. Our world has truly changed as at 2010 with new tvs, Facebook, Twitter, online shopping, fake faces and etc. What could be expected of in the next 10 years?

My point is, technology changes at rapid pace and those who slack off would be left so far behind, you wouldn’t be able to catch up. In 2000, I was so afraid to scan my finger during an exhibition because it’d take me countless time to get verified. In 2010, I can scan in less than 1 second and I can even scan my face and get verified. Not only that, now I can scan my finger AND then scan my face for better protection.

FingerTec is always finding ways to improve ourselves and introduce better products that are up-to-date with the latest technology. We are also using the latest technology to support you constantly without any extra costs to you. Come 2011, we’ll be introducing interesting new products and accessories that would make your business thrive even further. This new year also, we will be a better company that promotes a better cause. I am excited to welcome the new year, how about you?

by Norana Johar, COO, FingerTec HQ

Special Experience

Wednesday, 10 November 2010 company strategies , corporate culture , when things go wrong we can still make it right 0 Comments

My wife and I had totally forgotten that we needed to use the aero-train at Incheon Airport to reach Gate 110. We were already late at that point in time and this would add some extra minutes, which we didn’t have. When my wife realized this fact, she quickly made a decision to send our daughter to be led away by one of my colleagues, Nisha to the Gate, while I was still in the washroom, feeling at ease, mixed with a sense of loss after the 6 days 4 nights' company trip to South Korea was finally over.

Group photo at Everland

We were amongst the last few passengers who raced onboard after the final call; we saw our 9 years old daughter sitting timidly at the window seat, looking worry and sobbing in silence.

I could imagine her heart must feel like riding a roller coaster at famous Everland Theme Park, right up to the peak at one moment, because 4 hours earlier she was crowned the champion in the ice sculpture contest at the Ice Gallery most probably due to her fighting spirit and youngest in age; and plunged to the pit the next moment when she thought we might miss the flight, and she would have to travel back home alone with my colleagues; and felt relief again when we finally boarded the plane.

Overall, I still think this was a very good experience to her, because the whole journey might become a blur after many years, but the special moment would live vividly in her memory for her whole life.

Winners of the ice sculpture contest

A month earlier, I received Patrick Ku and his wife, a Taiwanese couple for their first visit to Malaysia. When I drove them around to Twin Towers and PutraJaya, they were amazed by how advanced my country is, if compared to the Philippines and Indonesia which they had been to many years ago. But along the journey to Malacca, Patrick said a monkey that snatched his waist bag that contained of passport, cash and travel documents and disappeared into the jungle in a botanical garden in Indonesia was the most unforgettable experience for him. He was later approached by a peanut hawker to use peanuts as bait, and successfully luring the same monkey out of the woods and exchanged the packet of peanuts with his waist bag. “Whether the monkey was trained by the hawker remained a mystery to me," said Patrick, but the episode would last forever for him.

When a story is worth telling, you might like to share it with others. The same with any special experience either good or bad one ones had encountered. I still recalled two years ago, I met a new customer from the Middle East who intended to purchase two units of FingerTec readers as samples. But he was not impressed when we sent him the wrong models. We couriered the correct models quickly and told him to keep the wrong ones as compensation because of our fault.

He wrote to thank us for our swift rectification for the mistake and said he would happy to deal with a trusted company like us, and if his biometrics business venture didn’t work out, he will definitely introduce FingerTec to some other interested friends.

And I particularly like Abbas Mukadam’s First Prize tagline in FingerTec Tagline Contest that goes, "The Touch of Assurance". Besides telling the outright characteristics of FingerTec products; it also appropriately summarizing in metaphor the characteristics of FingerTec as a brand too.

A better dealing experience, this is how we gained more happy customers. And a treat of company incentive trip to Korea; certainly makes happier FingerTec staff too. :)

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Mobile Time Attendance Solution

Monday, 1 November 2010 FingerTec USA Channel 0 Comments

Impactful Soft Marketing

Monday, 25 October 2010 0 Comments

Traveling Mind: Have you got a copy yet?

I write for a living. I'm not a writer but I do write quite often. The reason is simple. Nowadays people read a lot! Before you roll your eyes, I never said books. A lot of people are surfing the Internet in search of something. Some like to do online shopping, some like to Google information, some like to view pictures, some like to find friends, and the list of virtual activities continue. Google articles, Facebook notes, Twitter links, blogs, tumblr, etc are amongst the most popular Internet reading pleasures. The pieces don't have to be thesis-worth long to gain interest; they just need to be fascinating in some sense. A tv personality said the word "Perspection" on live national tv! was seen on Twitter and the rest of the nation talked about the event where a TV personality was seen asking a Swedish astronaut, "What is your perspection about the event tonight?" The rating for that event shoot up to 3.2mil viewers.

A recent news published that Malaysia ranks first for most online friends, and the trend duplicates in other countries as well. It's apparent that soft marketing in the Internet world in crucial. Soft marketing is the term used to describe when marketing your products without invading individual space or they called it marketing under the radar. To do this, writing is essential. Again, you don't have to seek your professor's approval; you just need to have good idea of what your brand is all about and not to go against your brand value.

What do you see when you watch Fernando Alonso's F1 car? You see Vodafone, you see Shell. That is soft marketing. What do you see when you watch the good looking Fernando Torres trying to score for Liverpool? Standard Chartered on his chest and Adidas on his pants. Well, those are expensive marketing venues; product placement on strategic spots during airtime. Seeing Simon Cowell sip on Coke during American Idol made me crave Coke in the middle of the night. That’s soft marketing and the effect is ridiculous! I drove to the nearest 7-Evelen for a bottle of cool fizzy tasty CocaCola.

How do we do it at a lesser cost? Spend some time to write and publish it regularly on strategic spots. Most business websites that I stumbled upon have very stiff business writings and are mostly not updated regularly. Many also make efforts to join the social media wagon but after some time, fall off of it because of decreased updates and no follow ups. The idea of newsletter is not new, people have been using it for ages but the trick is to do it regularly so that your audience is kept updated with what's going on with your brand. Companies usually have missions and visions on their websites, which mostly are cookie-cutter phrases borrowed from other business sites. Yawn! Yawn! The audience needs more than that.

FingerTec's Tagline Contest on Facebook has just ended and that for us is soft-marketing. Something fun that gets the crowd to know the brand. We blog about our brand and we hope you do too. We want to tumblr as well. We create FingerTec games. And definitely we want to do more in the future. FingerTec is not a consumer product and it’s even tougher for us. Therefore, we treasure your ideas if any. Please do contact us at editorial@fingertec.com. In the meantime, it'd be great if you could soft market FingerTec too. Thank you.

by Norana Johar, COO, FingerTec HQ

Webster, Revamping FingerTec Support

Monday, 18 October 2010 business trends , company strategies , corporate culture , do not simply be content with compliments 2 Comments

The moment I thought about how to explain more on Webster in my next blog entry, a compliment letter landed on my desk. In this letter, a local client, Advance Lens Trading, appraised FingerTec technical support for the unexpected prompt replies that had solved his critical problem at a critical time, when our reseller, or his vendor, took a longer time to respond.

Yes, we receive compliment emails quite regularly on our swift and precise solutions in tackling technical issues. I particularly like the way my senior marketing manager, Norana Johar shared the pride with the sales and technical staff. She wrote in her email:

“Yesterday we received a compliment letter from our satisfied client on our prompt technical support service, the compliment is particularly directed to Hasrie for the job well done. The management would like to congratulate Hasrie and we hope that you keep it up. In the meantime, we also hope that our FingerTec teams would make prompt replies as our standard practice at all time. Please keep in mind that a delay from our side could cost clients a significant amount of lost and our concern on their issues could save them a lot of trouble and money. This letter is a confirmation that we are doing something right but it doesn't mean that we could take a breather and relax. There is still more room for improvement to keep our promise to make things easy for our clients.

But for now, please do enjoy the compliment, as we deserve it once in a while. :) Have a good weekend.”

I exchanged experiences with a good friend, whose company also implements Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System in their daily operations. The system is deployed merely in his sales department to improve their sales. But in FingerTec, even though our Salesforce CRM covers both sales and technical support, we prioritize technical support.

As our business grows rapidly in these past 5 years, technical support is always our major concern. While most suppliers channel technical inquiries of end-customers back to their dealers, we printed a noticeable line that says, “For enquiries on technical matters, please forward the email to support@fingertec.com", in our user manual. Besides solving technical problems received from our resellers at a regular basis, we are also willing to take direct technical inquiries from end-users. By doing this, we help our resellers to shoulder some of the their support burdens, and in return we get two happier customers.

And, I always want to go a step further in solving technical problems. One of the best solutions should be a direct login into the affected terminals to avoid inaccurate elaborations of problem by any non-technical end-users.

This time, with web technology, we develop Webster, with three clear objectives. First, it would be a fundamental tool for customers who opt to use our web application, TimeTec. Second, it is for big corporations to enable centralization of the terminal data management in many branches in remote locations. And third, it could be used as an effective technical support tool as mentioned earlier.

When a reader comes with Webster, authorized personnel can remotely talk to the machine. Therefore, authorized staff, resellers or suppliers can diagnose the machine from far away to correct some settings or to update a new firmware that is meant to fix the problems, without having to return the terminal back to us or to send any technicians to the site, if the errors are not caused by the hardware failure.

I really am excited for the development of Webster, and stay tuned for the official release date.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Expanding with your Needs

Tuesday, 12 October 2010 FingerTec USA Channel 0 Comments

Social Media Tool – Like it?

Wednesday, 6 October 2010 business trends , company strategies , have you liked followed or subscribed? 0 Comments

I came across this full-page recruitment ad by CIMB Bank on a daily in Malaysia, hiring someone to fill up a new position, which did not exist in the past. The position is known as a social media executive or manager or director, for some big organizations, it might even evolve into a large department.

There is another interesting article, titled “Twitter, Twitter Little Stars” in Bloomberg Businessweek (July 19-July 25, 2010 issue); it is not a special report to cover Twitter, a mini blog engine, but it is intended to discuss the rising needs for corporate to include social media in their daily operation.

The article quoted Felix Gillette, a media reporter’s observation, “Layoffs? Not in the social media departments of corporate America. As customers make or break brands online, companies are rushing to hire social media directors … ” Quite a number of the big brands in the market have hired social media experts. And all of them tap on the online social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, and some even include RSS, YouTube, or Flickr to build a closer tie with their customers, and some may use the social media engine as a direct marketing tool to promote their products.

The change is fast happening. Today’s business has to build a better relationship and to have a more straightforward contact with the clients such as posting customers the latest news, or having their feedbacks read by the people at the top. Yes, it’s time for shopping malls to scrap the less efficient drop-off message boxes.

The outbound advertising media like newspapers, TV or billboards used to be popular for advertisers to broadcast their one-way message to customers, becoming old fashion nowadays in a more interactive-demanding Internet Era. In the past, not many big organizations would want to entertain customer that has zero complaint. Survey form is circulated whenever they need to gather customer’s opinions, and Customer Service Department is set up as a formality and normally only receiving and dealing with barking customers.

The arrival of Web 2.0 and Internet social media tools have changed the way we communicate. Businesses fast detected the opportunity to improve the conventional lopsided communication with customers by adopting the new wave of social media tools. Some activities (like FingerTec tagline contest) were organized within the social media sites to lure customers to “like” them in Facebook.

We are not selling consumer products, but as one of the world’s leading biometrics product suppliers, we do know the important of social media tool in helping us enhancing the way we communicate with customers.

It’s not hard to “like” us on Facebook, as we like to have many FingerTec customers riding the latest technology with us; “follow” us at Twitter as we also would like to follow you; and “subscribe” our video clips at YouTube, as we subscribe to improve ourselves for you.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

FingerTec in ISAF - Wooing An Istanbul Distributor

Monday, 27 September 2010 0 Comments

Tamy received a lot of Konichiwas

The show in Istanbul just ended today leaving us with a feeling of hope. Turkiye is one of the important markets of the security industry; made strong by its geographical location, vastness and economic power. ISAF attracted vendors from various sectors from CCTV, fire security, turnstiles, gates, etc and biometrics certainly is not a novel technology in this show. People are already familiar with this solution or at least know that fingerprint products are available.

The main challenge now is finding a right partner which could carry FingerTec's brand essence without compromising on price factor significantly.

And I received a lot of "Are you a muslim?" question. :)

The first and second day of the show were rather slow on Hall 10, where we were located along with the fire security companies, as compared to Hall 9, which was a little bit happening with some songs on loudspeakers. The next two days were much better for us. Everybody was looking to view the price list and not so much on the product specifications. The fact that China made products have been flooding the Istanbul market made our price seems a bit on the higher side. This fact needed some explanation and our audiences understood the fact after being presented with the resources we offer them as our resellers. Interestingly, unlike many other places we've been to, many are interested to become resellers to a Turkish distributor. They are willing to pay higher price rather than dealing with importation of products from abroad. We find this situation quite unique as compared to many countries that always want to be distributors despite how low the quantity of their orders. :)

The show started to draw on crowds on the weekend

This time we didn't hire any translator because the one that came to work didn't know English. She understands Turkish and understands English (as what she signaled to me) but she couldn't speak any English except "so-so" and then she flashed a big smile to us. We had to send her back without any replacement. And surprisingly, people who are interested to deal with us came back with their translator to make things easy for both parties. Marketing your products in English in Turkey is a no-brainer. It is our mission to find a partner that can communicate in English but we will definitely do our marketing and resources in Turkish to capture this market. Translations of our software and hardware in Turkish are done so far and we will move on to other data sheets and materials. We already made a few acquaintances in Turkey to assist us on good translations.

ISAF is definitely a good platform for the security industry and we are proud to be apart of this growing market. All we could do now is to be hopeful that we could secure a good partner that could bring FingerTec to a greater height in this great country. Any party interested, please email me at info@fingertec.com.

by Norana Johar, COO, FingerTec HQ

Istanbul – A Reminder of What Would We Left Behind

Thursday, 23 September 2010 0 Comments

The landmarks of this great city like the Hagia Sophia, the Sultanahmet Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome, would leave all visitors with at least a tinge of admiration regardless of one’s religion, to the level of dedication and passion this city had on beauty, intricate details and on arts itself. Modern design is just an excuse word to escape being labeled as lazy, in my opinion.

A step into the Saint Sophia made my heart skipped a beat. Though it looks tired at some angles, every inch of the building spills professed love of the devotees of Christianity and Islam to this place of worship. There are huge calligraphy arts at a diameter of 7-meter wide each hanging high inside the building bearing the name of the Creator, Allah, Muhammad the messenger and his respectable caliphs. At the same time, in every corner of the first floor right wing, there are several mosaic arts made of real gold depicting the hand over of the city Istanbul to Jesus Christ and Virgin Mary by Constantine, “my Istanbul (Constantinople) is your Istanbul”

Every door is carved with intricate details, the mimbar, the prayer area of the Sultan – everything exudes handcraftsmanship at its highest level of perfection. A visit to Sultanahmet Blue Mosque confirms the same attitude the Istanbullus possesed in creating a monumental landmark. The grand mosque was built in a mere 5 years by 10,000 workers has every detail of precision and delicate designs to make it stand out even after the tests of time.

The art and culture are deeply rooted in the heart and soul of the Istanbullus. I stood in the middle of the night admiring the beautiful mosaic piece on the wall of its Metro station. I find joy strolling the city of Istanbul with the rests of millions visitors admiring the bits and pieces of the city’s uniqueness.

I couldn’t let go of the fact that we have come so far in ignoring the needs in paying attention to small details, and to always strive for excellence in everything that we do, even how trivial. Today’s generation are so void, engulfed and engaged on Facebook and the Internet without realizing that we have lost so much of our own identity and pride over time.

What would be our legacy to the next generation and would they be in awe when they think about us and the stories we left behind?